


Decompilation

by tablelamp



Category: Red Dwarf
Genre: Emotionally Repressed, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Not Without Serious Qualms Though, Self-Sacrifice, This Is Rimmer After All
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-26
Updated: 2019-02-26
Packaged: 2019-11-01 23:54:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17877188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tablelamp/pseuds/tablelamp
Summary: He had tosmile.That ruined everything.





	Decompilation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kangeiko](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kangeiko/gifts).



Lister leaned in around the doorway to the bunk room. "Sure you won't change your mind?"

Rimmer lay in his bunk, staring at the underside of Lister's bunk and feeling stroppy. "Lister, for the last time, I've got much better things to do than visiting some planet for the view."

"It's not just a view, man," Lister protested, entering the room. "Holly says sunrise should be ten times as vivid as it was on Earth. Think about that. Ten times!"

"I'm surprised you can count that high," Rimmer said, stuffing down the small voice inside him that suggested it would be nice to visit the planet with Lister...that it might even be romantic if the right things happened. The small voice inside him was a git with nothing but useless hopes. Of course he had feelings for Lister, and of course, if Lister ever knew that, Rimmer would never hear the end of it. Rimmer knew very well what came of admitting you had feelings--pain and humiliation. He was already a laughingstock to Lister; there was no need to give Lister every smegging advantage.

"Sunrise only happens on this planet once every eighty-seven years," Lister said. "We'll be dead by the time it happens again."

Rimmer was sure that was a jab at him. "Some of us are already dead, or had you forgotten?"

Lister sighed. "You can't do it, can you? You can't even stand me for five minutes, let alone two hours."

"Well, what about you?" Rimmer retorted, purposely ignoring Lister's question. If it had been just the two of them...but no doubt Cat would be there, and Kryten. If Rimmer was reluctant to reveal anything to Lister alone, he certainly wasn't going to do it in front of a sentient hairball and a walking hoover, no matter how beautiful sunrise was. "I'm sure you'll have a much better time without me."

Lister opened his mouth to say something, then shook his head. "Have it your way." He started for the door, then turned to look at Rimmer, smiling at him. Although Rimmer knew Lister's mocking smile very well, this wasn't that kind of smile. It looked sincere and warm, qualities that Rimmer didn't have a lot of experience with but theoretically could recognise. "If you change your mind, you know where we'll be." And he left the room.

He had to _smile._ That ruined everything. The small voice inside Rimmer was now screaming, _Go after him, you utter gimboid! He wants you to go!_ It was a sign of how shaken the smile had left Rimmer that, for one impetuous moment, he considered getting off his bunk, hurrying after Lister, and claiming he'd only been joking about not wanting to go in a way that somehow preserved his dignity and didn't make him seem as desperate as he absolutely was...oh smeg. If this was what happened with a smile, Rimmer lived in dread of Lister ever winking at him.

No. He would stay and have his two-hour Hammond organ concert as planned. And he wouldn't think about Lister once the entire time. 

Well. Maybe once. 

_***_

Rimmer was halfway through his organ concert when Holly's face appeared on the screen in the bunk room. "Hello, Arnold."

Rimmer sighed, pausing the music. "What do you want?"

"That's it?" Holly asked. "No 'Nice to see you, Holly' or 'You're looking well, Holly'? Not even a friendly hello?"

"Hello," Rimmer said irritably. "Now what do you want?"

"I could use a bit of help reorganising," Holly said.

"You're a computer. What do you have to organise?"

"Turns out there's all sorts of programs in the ship's computers that we don't actually need," Holly said. "Thought I'd get rid of some of them and give myself space to stretch out a bit."

"What's this got to do with me?" Rimmer asked.

"Some of them can't run while I'm about," Holly said. "If I turn them on to see what they are, I start running in the background and can't see anything. When I come back, they've gone."

Rimmer paused. "You want me to see what a program is so I can tell you when you come back?"

"That'd be great, thanks," Holly said. "I'm running the first one now."

"No, wait! Holly!" But Holly had already gone from the screen. Rimmer sighed again, a bit more loudly even though there was no one left to hear him.

At least, not until a small dark-haired man in bland, nondescript clothing appeared in front of Rimmer. "Finally, someone to talk to! All right, what d'you want done?"

"What do you mean? Who are you?" Rimmer asked. If this person was a crew member, Rimmer hadn't met him.

"I'm not a who," the man said indignantly. "I'm the Decompiler!"

"Ah," Rimmer said, pretending he understood. "Which does what?"

The Decompiler folded his arms, looking less than thrilled about explaining his function to someone. "Right. So a Decompiler, he takes apart running programs and converts them to source code."

Rimmer felt a shiver walk its way down his back. "Well, that's a stupid job."

"Stupid it may be, Sunshine, but it's the job I've got," the Decompiler retorted. "So. What shall I take apart?"

"Nothing!" Rimmer said. "Leave everything as it is and go away."

The Decompiler shook his head. "Not possible. I'm running now. You've gotta do something with me."

"Well, I don't want to," Rimmer said through gritted teeth.

"Listen, if you won't tell me what to decompile, I'll decompile something on my own," the Decompiler said. "The AI running this ship, for instance. Ooh, that'd be lovely to reduce to source code, that. Nice and complicated, takes loads of time..."

Rimmer's sense of foreboding doubled. "Holly? You can't decompile Holly. Then Holly won't be running."

"Doesn't matter to me," the Decompiler said, examining his fingernails. "I don't know Holly."

Rimmer glared at the Decompiler. "If Holly isn't running, nothing on Red Dwarf will work. Life support systems, dispensing machines..." He and Kryten could do all right without food or air to breathe, but Lister and Cat couldn't. And if Holly wasn't running, the ship might not have power, which meant that both he and Kryten would stop functioning eventually. 

"Not my priority," the Decompiler said. "Listen, you brought me here and there's not that many programs running."

No, there wouldn't be, would there? Rimmer fought to think through his increasing panic. The Decompiler had to take apart a program that was running, which meant that Holly must be running in the background, despite being unable to interact with either the Decompiler or Rimmer, who were both running fully.

 _That's an idea,_ said the small voice inside Rimmer.

No. Rimmer did have a tendency to make self-defeating decisions, he knew that, but this was a step too far even for him. He'd fought long and hard to keep even the tiny simulated bit of life he had left, and he wasn't going to give it up for anyone.

_Then you think you can watch Holly and Lister die?_

That stopped Rimmer short. Could he do that to save himself? Sacrifice Holly and then watch as Lister suffocated the moment he stepped out of Starbug and back onto Red Dwarf? Or maybe the docking mechanisms wouldn't work without Holly, in which case Starbug would circle Red Dwarf over and over until it ran out of power and air and...were there dispensing machines on Starbug? Rimmer never had to use them so he'd never paid them much attention. Anyway, they'd run out of food eventually. And Rimmer would know that his refusal to do anything meant that he'd killed the one person he had any semblance of caring about in the whole smegging cosmos. He could do most anything to protect his own existence...but he knew what dying was like. He'd done it at least twice, and it had been awful both times. He couldn't do that to Lister.

"If there's nothing else, I'd like to get started," the Decompiler said, beginning to look annoyed at the lack of instruction.

"There is something else," Rimmer said hurriedly. "Don't decompile the AI. I want you to...to decompile the database of holographic crew members."

The Decompiler looked almost giddy in a way that made Rimmer feel ill. "All those people, reverse engineered to source code?"

"Yes," Rimmer said queasily. For once, he and the little voice inside him were in perfect agreement; this was what had to be done. "All those people."

The Decompiler cracked his knuckles. "Right. No time to lose, then. I'll get started straightaway."

"Take your time," Rimmer said. "We don't want any coding errors."

"I'll have you know I do beautiful work," the Decompiler retorted.

Rimmer hoped that was true, but mostly he hoped the others would be back before the Decompiler had finished.

***

"You missed a great sunrise, man," Lister said as he walked into the bunk room. "I've never seen a sky that shade of purple." Then he stopped in horror. A dark-haired man he'd never seen before was standing next to Rimmer, who was flickering in and out unsteadily.

"Stop it!" Lister shouted. "Whatever you're doing to him, stop it!"

The dark-haired man did stop, and Rimmer's flickering stopped too.

"What now?" the man asked, looking put-upon.

"Just what did you think you were doing?" Lister demanded, getting in the man's face. Anyone messing with his mates was spoiling for a rumble.

The man leaned back uneasily. "Literally the only job I have is to decompile things. Doesn't anyone read the user's manual?"

User's manual? So...this man had to be a program of some kind. But who'd activate a decompiler program, and why? "So you thought you'd decompile Rimmer?"

"He told me to decompile everyone in the crew member database," the Decompiler said. 

"You've done enough," Lister said. "Recompile him."

The Decompiler folded his arms. "Listen, you want something decompiled, use a Decompiler. I don't recompile; that's a Recompiler's job."

"Then get the Recompiler out here. I haven't got all day," Lister said.

"I don't know where he is, do I? I'm not a ship's computer," the Decompiler said.

Brilliant. Just brilliant. "You can't undo what you did, you can't contact the Recompiler...is there anything you can do?"

"Listen, I don't have to take this," the Decompiler said, irritated. "Ever since I started running, it's been nothing but complaints all the time. Don't decompile the ship's AI. Don't decompile the hologram programs. I didn't choose my function, did I? You lot gave it to me and then complained when I did what I was programmed for!" 

"Yeah, cause you're not supposed to be here," Lister said.

The Decompiler folded his arms. "Maybe you're not supposed to be here."

Lister had had enough. He wanted to enjoy the magical memories of the sunrise he'd just seen, not squabble with some jumped-up program with a tyrannical streak. "Holly?"

"You can't talk to Holly till I'm through," the Decompiler said smugly.

"We'll see about that," Lister said. He tried to be patient with anything sentient, but whoever programmed the Decompiler apparently hadn't cared about customer service. "Emergency override..."

"You can't!" the Decompiler protested.

"Lister 6-9-10-9." The moment Lister finished giving his override code, the Decompiler blinked out of existence. Lister hadn't been sure the override code would work--it was only useful in emergency situations--but he'd hoped the decompilation of the only other crew member aboard Red Dwarf counted as emergency enough, and he'd been right. Still, until he knew what condition Rimmer was in, he couldn't feel too pleased about it.

Rimmer, who had been in a holding pattern but no longer was, collapsed to his knees, breathing heavily.

Lister crouched beside him. "Rimmer? You all right?"

"Hurts," Rimmer managed to say.

Lister made his voice gentle. "What hurts? Maybe I can fix it."

"I'm not...” Rimmer seemed to be talking, but he pixelated mid-sentence, the sound of his voice only returning when the pixels vanished and he appeared as his usual self. “...something's not right..." 

"You stupid smeg," Lister said, though he was more worried than angry at this point. He wondered how much damage the Decompiler had done before Lister had forced him to stop running. "Why'd you tell him to decompile you?"

"He would've done Holly...life support..." Rimmer was pixelating fairly often, and every time it happened, it seemed to hurt him.

Lister shook his head. "You don't _need_ life support."

Rimmer met his eyes. "You do."

No. _No._ Rimmer, the Rimmer Lister knew, Arnold I-hate-your-smegging-guts Rimmer, couldn't have sacrificed himself for Lister. Lister had never known Rimmer to sacrifice himself for anyone; Rimmer's entire motivating principle was to act as selfishly as possible and then pretend he hadn't. This made no sense.

"Why?" Lister asked.

Rimmer didn't answer...but with that look on his face, Rimmer didn't have to.

"Sorry," Rimmer whispered.

Lister felt as though the deck below him was about to fall away and leave him lost, floating in space somewhere. Rimmer had feelings for him. Somewhere, in the middle of rejecting every potential overture of friendship Lister had ever made, was someone who secretly wanted more than friendship. "You should've told me."

Rimmer looked away. "You'd laugh."

"Am I laughing?" Lister asked. Of course. Rimmer often struck first, even when Lister wasn't feeling particularly hostile to start. It was for protection...self-preservation. What a numpty he'd been not to notice before now. If only he had noticed, things could've been so different.

Rimmer looked at him, about to say something, and then another bout of pixelation hit him--a bad one, leaving him gasping and hunched over forward. Lister instinctively reached out a hand to touch his shoulder, then pulled it back as his hand started to pass through. He didn't think putting his hand through Rimmer could make things any worse, but he'd rather not find out.

"Holly," Lister shouted.

Holly appeared on the screen. "Hello, Dave. Have a nice time?"

"What's happened to Rimmer?" Lister demanded.

"Looks like he's a bit decompiled," Holly said. "Never seen a case this bad before."

"Can you fix it?" Lister asked.

"I think so," Holly said.

Lister gave Rimmer a hopeful look. "See? Holly can fix it."

"Once I find my recompilation program," Holly said. "Half a mo."

"Holly--!" But the AI was already gone. Lister looked at Rimmer, who looked pale, sweaty, and all sorts of unwell. Why hadn't he gone to the planet with them? Lister had asked him to. He'd wanted him to. He'd wanted to share that sunrise with someone who wasn't calculating Starbug's return trajectories or staring at his own reflection in a nearby puddle of water. And if he'd known how Rimmer felt...maybe he'd have known the right thing to say to talk him round.

Rimmer made a pained sound. "Please...help me..."

"Course I will," Lister said, trying to keep his voice calm even though he found it difficult to see Rimmer in this much pain.

"Might be better if...” Rimmer pixelated. “...turn me off.”

"I'm not sure that'll work," Lister said. "We don't know how bad the damage is."

"What if...program corrupts?" Rimmer asked.

"Your program is not going to corrupt," Lister said firmly, trying to convince himself as much as Rimmer. “Do you think you can...” Lister’s voice faltered mid-sentence and he silently cursed himself. Now was no time to let his feelings get in the way of everything. Rimmer needed him. “I'll shut you off if you don’t think you can manage. But I...” Lister shook his head. “If I turn you off and can’t get you back, man...”

Rimmer looked at Lister with an expression that looked almost like sympathy. Maybe it was. “I can manage.”

“If it hurts too much, you tell me,” Lister said, voice still wobbly. He didn't want to harm Rimmer by keeping him running, but he genuinely didn't know if turning Rimmer off would make his program irretrievable. The idea of genuinely losing Rimmer, the one person who'd been through nearly everything with him, was too overwhelming to think about. “Smeg.”

“...tell you,” Rimmer promised, pixelating a bit.

Lister nodded. “I hope Holly comes back soon. But I’ll stay with you till then.”

Rimmer almost smiled. “Thank you.”

Lister hoped the little he could do would be enough. It didn’t feel like it.

***

Lister was sitting on the floor, his back against Rimmer's bunk bed frame, when Kryten entered the room, tray in hand.

"Mr Lister, sir," Kryten said, keeping his voice quiet, "I've brought you something to eat."

Lister looked at the tray, which held a lager and a curry. Ordinarily, he'd jump at the chance, but... "Thanks. I'm not hungry."

"You've got to keep your strength up, sir," Kryten said anxiously, trying to give Lister the tray anyway.

Lister took the tray, setting it beside him and glancing at Rimmer, who now lay in bed, eyes closed, a vaguely troubled look on his face. "It's not my strength I'm worried about."

Kryten nodded. "How is he?"

"Getting some sleep," Lister said. "Still in pain though. He pulls faces when it's bad." Lister shook his head. "I keep trying to touch him. Rub his back or pat his arm...things me gran used to do when I was little and poorly."

"Holly will find the recompilation program, sir," Kryten said kindly.

Lister nodded. He knew Kryten meant well, but Lister liked to be prepared for the worst. Only preparing for this was difficult. "He likes me, you know."

"Who, sir?"

"Rimmer." Lister turned his attention to Kryten. "He told the program to decompile him instead of Holly so I wouldn't die."

"The probability of that is only .052, sir," Kryten said, trying to be tactful.

"I know. I didn't believe it either." Lister paused. "Can't blame him for not telling me when I didn't tell him."

"Tell him?" Kryten looked confused.

"I wanted to like him. I wanted him to let me like him. Nothing ever goes to plan, though, does it?"

"On Red Dwarf, sir, not often," Kryten admitted. He seemed to do a quick mental calculation, then continued. "Although I have limited knowledge of human interactions, I'm given to understand that it can be helpful to share one's feelings in a difficult situation so nothing important is left unsaid."

Lister nodded. "In case the worst happens."

"Yes, sir." Kryten looked solemn.

Lister tried to smile at Kryten. "Thanks, man."

"You're welcome, sir. Please don't forget to eat," Kryten said.

Lister took a fork full of food and saluted Kryten with it. Then he took a bite. Kryten nodded, satisfied, and bustled off down the corridor. Lister set the fork down. He'd eat when he felt like it, but he didn't feel like it now.

"Lister?"

Lister immediately turned his attention away from the food. "How do you feel?"

"Like smeg," Rimmer said. He seemed to be pixelating a bit less since he'd slept, and not in the middle of sentences as he had been. He still seemed to be in pain though. "No joy?"

Lister shook his head. "Holly's still searching. Can I do something?"

"You are."

"I'm not."

"You are," Rimmer repeated. "You're here."

Lister snorted. "You never liked that before."

Rimmer's voice was very, very small. "Yes, I did."

Lister looked at Rimmer for a long moment. For two people who spent so much time together, Lister wondered if they'd ever actually looked at each other before. "I liked it too. Should've said so before now."

"Lister?" Rimmer was so hesitant, so careful. It broke Lister's heart a little. "Not really."

Lister nodded. "Really."

"Oh." Rimmer was silent for a long moment, considering something. "Do you think I'll die? Or...die again, I suppose. Stop existing."

"I don't know," Lister said, shaking his head. "We'll try everything we can." Lister didn't know exactly what to say because he didn't know what Rimmer wanted to talk about, or if he wanted to talk about anything. "Are you worried?"

"No," Rimmer said. "I'm terrified. There's a difference." Another silence. "Lister, if I survive--"

"Rimmer, don't," Lister said.

"No, I want to say this," Rimmer said. "I know I'm not much. Not anything really. I never was. I'm not a good person, and if I get through this, I still won't be. But I'll try to be better."

"Might be hard," Lister said. "We've got a bit of a pattern, trading insults and that."

Rimmer nodded. "I've said some awful things."

"So have I." Lister didn't even want to think about which comments of his might have accidentally drawn blood. "You know that...if I'd known, I wouldn't've...?"

Rimmer nodded. "I think so." He slid out of his bunk so he could sit beside Lister on the floor. "I doubt we'll stop arguing entirely. I'm not sure I want to; it gives us something to do and something else to think about. I don't know if you've noticed, but sometimes it's dead boring around here."

Lister laughed a little. "I know what you mean."

"What I mean is, I'll try to argue without attacking. If I can. Which I'm still not sure of." Rimmer gave Lister a sheepish look. "All this is fairly new to me."

"Me too," Lister said, "but I'll try to do the same." If he got the chance.

Rimmer was beginning to look pale and queasy again; Lister knew more bouts of pixelation were probably on the way. "Will you tell me something?"

"Yeah?" Lister waited for more information.

"What was the sunrise like?"

Lister looked at Rimmer a moment, wondering if Rimmer wanted distraction or just a change of subject. Then he looked out in front of him, picturing the sky from the planet below as he spoke. "It's completely dark to start. There's no moon, only hundreds of stars scattered all over the sky. The colour shifts so slowly you almost don't notice, until the sky's this deep sort of velvet purple. The purple keeps getting brighter and warmer and more intense, with the stars shining through it all the time. But slowly, so you can see every minute of it. It goes from a bright purple to a deep pink, and the pink's the same--warmer and lighter until it turns into this unbelievable orange, and when you think it can't get any brighter, the sun comes up. And the sky turns this sort of pale yellow, which fades into a colour that almost isn't a colour at all, and from there into pale blue, and then the blue brightens until you've got daylight sky." Lister glanced back at Rimmer, who had an odd little smile on his face and was looking off into the distance, as though he could see it all.

Rimmer met Lister's gaze. "Thank you."

Lister nodded. It wasn't the real thing, but it was all the sunrise they could have for now.

Holly appeared on the screens. "I've found the recompilation program. Shall I set it running?"

"Yes, please," Lister said eagerly.

Holly disappeared, and after a moment, a small, dark-haired man in nondescript clothing appeared.

"Oh, no," Rimmer said, looking horrified.

The man looked behind himself, then at Rimmer and Lister. "What's wrong?"

"What program are you?" Lister asked cautiously.

"I'm the Recompiler," the man said, drawing himself up to his full height.

"You look just like the Decompiler," Rimmer said, expression suspicious.

"Yeah, the same programmer wrote us both and made us look like him," the Recompiler said. "I don't like the Decompiler though. He's a right bastard."

"You seem nice enough," Lister said, hoping that was a good sign.

"I think it's a function of the job," the Recompiler said. "Take things to bits all the time? Of course you're going to be a goit. Putting them together is much more satisfying."

"Can you help me?" Rimmer asked. "I've been partially decompiled, and the rest of the hologram database has been too."

The Recompiler stared into space a moment. "I can see that. Yeah, I can fix you. I'll have to stop you running though."

Rimmer and Lister turned to look at each other. Lister had twenty-five things he wanted to say all crowding into his brain at once. He chose the one he thought would be most helpful.

"See you soon, man," Lister said.

Rimmer nodded, looking a bit nervous. "See you." He held out his hand to shake hands with Lister, and then grimaced, withdrawing his hand. "Sorry."

"You're all right," Lister said. "Take care."

"You too," Rimmer said. He turned to face the Recompiler, looking as though he were trying to live up to a kid's idea of what being brave was. "I'm ready."

And then he was gone. Lister was glad he was already sitting down.

"How long d'you think this'll take?" Lister asked.

"An hour or two," the Recompiler said. "We'll have your friend running again in no time."

Just a few days ago, Lister might've protested that Rimmer wasn't his friend. Now he tried to smile, aware what bad luck it was that Rimmer had become his friend at the moment they might never see each other again. Anytime Lister made plans for the future, the universe seemed to delight in stopping them coming true. His plan to live on Fiji had been the same. "Thanks."

He slumped back against the bunk bed frame, already missing Rimmer's presence next to him. Rimmer would be back soon. Lister had to believe that.

***

Rimmer found himself in the bunk room, staring at Holly on the screen. The first thing he noticed was that nothing hurt. He looked down at himself, but there was no sign of pixels so far. "Am I all right?"

"You're back to normal, if that's what you mean," Holly said, giving Rimmer a satisfied nod before disappearing from the screen.

Rimmer tried to examine every bit of his outward appearance that he could see. He didn't look damaged, and much to his relief, he felt fine.

"You're back!" Lister said from behind him. Before Rimmer could respond, Lister nearly tackled Rimmer, drawing him into a tight hug. Rimmer made an odd little sound at the back of his throat, overwhelmed at the sensation. How long had it been since he had been touched by anyone? Had anyone ever held him like this?

 _You should probably hug him back,_ suggested the small voice inside Rimmer, which Rimmer was starting to recognise as the part of him that was actually still in touch with his emotions.

Hesitantly, Rimmer lifted his arms, wrapping them awkwardly around Lister as he attempted a hug. "How are you doing this?"

"Called in a few favours," Lister said. "I'm so glad you're all right." He pulled back to look at Rimmer and that was when Rimmer saw the H on Lister's forehead.

"Oh no," Rimmer whispered. "What happened?"

Lister looked blank for a moment, and then he realised what Rimmer was looking at. "Oh, that! No, I'm not dead. Kryten's looking after my body in the Science Room. I just transferred meself into the computer--wanted to give you a proper welcome."

Rimmer reached out, touching the back of Lister's hand with his fingertips. It felt warm. "You went to all this trouble so we could touch?"

Lister caught Rimmer's hand in his. "I wanted it as much as you."

Rimmer stroked his thumb gently along Lister's hand. "I was going to say it feels like you, but I wouldn't know."

Lister nodded. "Wasn't a lot of handholding going on when you were alive."

Rimmer almost laughed. "No." 

"How do you feel?" Lister asked.

"So much better," Rimmer said. "And relieved."

"Yeah." Lister looked at his feet, smiling slightly. "It's funny. I feel a bit shy now."

"Me too," Rimmer admitted. His fantasies had tended to veer from slightly to very risque, but that had been imaginary, with Rimmer picturing things however he wanted them to be. Being with real actual Lister, Rimmer was nervous as well as excited; he couldn't start over if he went wrong somewhere. "You do like me a little...don't you? This isn't just because you feel guilty or because you want to make some elaborate joke at my expense--"

"No," Lister interrupted. "When I thought you might not come back..." His mouth worked, and Rimmer discovered in that moment how much Lister would have missed him, even if Lister couldn't say it. "Yeah, I like you."

"Cat and Kryten won't know what to make of us," Rimmer said, trying to turn the conversation in an easier direction.

Lister laughed at that. "Kryten can adapt, and Cat won't care."

"True." Rimmer cleared his throat. "Could you possibly...hold me a bit? It was nice when you did that before."

Lister gave Rimmer a look of such affection that Rimmer's breath, simulated as it was, caught in his throat. "Course I can."

As Rimmer snuggled into Lister's embrace, he closed his eyes and felt himself relax. He still wasn't completely comfortable with the idea of something good happening to him; he kept expecting the awful thing that inevitably followed the good thing. But maybe in this case, he could get used to it.

And in the meantime, he had Lister.

"Is it too much if I say I want to snog you?" Lister asked.

Rimmer felt desire pulse through him, but kept his tone blase despite his excitement. "Well, maybe you should."

"I should say it?" Lister's expression was playful and there was humour in his voice.

"You should stop wasting time," Rimmer murmured, leaning toward Lister, encouraging him.

And when their mouths met, Rimmer knew this was exactly what he had been hoping for.


End file.
